Mark Pocan

Here’s a special message from Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin State Assembly member and openly-gay bold progressive candidate for Congress:

When Tammy Baldwin became the first openly-gay American elected to Congress as a non-incumbent,Ai??her victory was a historic breakthrough.

It allowed other openly-gay people to seek public office without fear — people like me.

In less than one week, we could make history againAi??with Tammy Baldwin becoming the first openly-gay senator. And if myself and others like Mark Takano get elected, we could send the largest LGBT delegation to Congress in history.

Can you help us achieve history by donating $3 to Tammy Baldwin and Mark Takano’s campaign today? ]

YES! Great progressives in Congress vs. a cup of coffee. Easy choice!

No. But happy to volunteer from home. Show me the call shifts for them later today and this week.

Mark Takano is a friend and has already provided great value to his local California community as a teacher. I’m proud of him for making the decision to run for Congress — he calls himself “openly gay and openly progressive.”

All of us will oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. We want strong government investment in jobs. And we support real accountability for Wall Street.

PCCC members have already made thousands of calls for our campaigns, and today will be a big day.

Please click here to sign up to make calls from home today and this week.Ai??And know that you have our thanks.

(Or, chip in a few dollars to Tammy and Mark’s campaigns.)

Thanks for being a bold progressive.

Tommy Thompson

As bold progressive Elizabeth Warren said in her speech at the Democratic National Convention, “Republicans say they don’t believe in government. Sure they do. They believe in government to help themselves and their powerful friends.”

Case in point: Wisconsin Republican Senate nominee Tommy Thompson. At a Tea Party rally this past weekend, Thompson addressed the crowd about the virtues of self-reliance and individualism:

THOMPSON: The Constitution says We The People, not We The Government! […] Read the Constitution, Mr. President. We the people! We built it ourselves!

Watch it:

But as Thompson attacked the public sector and preached self-reliance, what he didn’t mention was that he personally has made millions of dollars off of taxpayers.

To start with, practically his entire career has been in government. Shortly after completing law school in 1966, he ran for Wisconsin State Assembly. He won, and cycled between a series of government jobs, ranging from Governor of Wisconsin to George W. Bush’s Health and Human Services Secretary.

After leaving Bush’s cabinet, he joined the private sector — sort of. He worked for the powerful lobbying firm Akin Gump, and worked to advise health care corporations and how they could make as much as possible off of the U.S. government. He became president of the health care form Logistics Health Incorporated, and got an $11 million government contract to manage health care for 9/11 first-responders — which his company bungled.

Given the fact that he’s spent nearly his entire life in government and that his few short years out of it basically consisted of figuring out how to help corporations profit off of the government, Thompson is the last person who should be lecturing anyone on the virtues of the free market and self-reliance.

Tell Thompson he …

A month ago, we reported that Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown has held over thirty Washington, D.C. fundraisers with lobbyists and other elite donors but hasn’t held a single open town hall for all of his constituents to come to.

Since then, Brown has yet to hold any town hall events, even as he’s campaigning against bold progressive Elizabeth Warren, who has steadily overtaken him in the polls. That means Brown has been in office a whopping 1,000 days and he hasn’t held any open town hall events for his constituents.

In his last campaign for office, Brown said that he was running for “the people’s seat.” But he consistently refuses to meet with the people.

Take action. Sign up to make calls for his bold progressive opponent Elizabeth Warren.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a Washington, D.C.-based liberal advocacy group and a federally registered political action committee, says it made 8,000 calls to Vermonters on Sunday on behalf of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin and Democratic treasurer candidate Beth Pearce. The calls were part of the committee’s “Call out the Vote” campaign in which members of PCCC are trying to reach out to one million Americans with advice about federal and state candidates to support.

A NASA image of Hurricane Sandy

The people of the northeast coast of the United States are facing down one of the worst storms in years, as Hurricane Sandy barrels towards New York City. This serves as a stark reminder of the importance of having a government that has the capacity to decently take care of its people.

In order for the government to have that capacity, it needs funding. Last June, House Democrats proposed an amendment to increase funding for the government’s ability to respond to mass flooding, with a $31.6 million appropriation for “flood control and coastal emergencies so we can train and plan for natural disasters, respond to hurricanes, fight floods, and repair storm damage reduction projects.”

Republicans overwhelmingly voted down the amendment in a 233-185 vote. Only two Republicans supported the measure — Rep. Steve King (IA) and Rep. Tom Latham (IA).

It’s important to remember this not to politicize this tragedy — Americans of all political stripes are dealing with the ramifications of the storm, and they all deserve our thoughts and efforts — but to remember that politics has consequences.

Please contribute to our Hurricane Preparedness Fund so that we can pay for generators to power our election headquarters. With your backing, we can continue to call voters on behalf of great progressives like Elizabeth Warren and Alan Grayson. We can also help defeat Republicans who tried to hold disaster relief funds hostage, like Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH).

A NASA image of Hurricane Sandy

The right has made a religion out of bashing the federal government’s ability to help ordinary people and make America prosperous. But the oncoming “Frankenstorm” Hurricane Sandyshows that the ability for the government to have the funding it needs to tackle challenges like a major natural disaster is crucial.

Americans who live in the northeast of all political stripes are bracing for the storm’s impact, but it was one political party in particular who decided to repeatedly threaten the government’s ability to respond to hurricanes.

In March 2011, the House Republicans passed a continuing resolution that included a cut of $450.3 million to the NOAA as compared to President Obamaai??i??s requested budget. It also cut the National Weather Service by $126 million and reduced ai???funding for FEMA management by $24.3 million off of the FY2010 budget, and [reduced] that appropriation by $783.3 million for FEMA state and local programs.ai??? House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) also famously threatened to delay disaster relief for Hurricane Irene until certain budget cuts were put in place.

The budget pressure resulting from wrangling over funding for FEMA has taken a real toll on the agency. Last August, FEMA cut back on tornado assistance to Alabama, for instance, which was hit by a spree of killer storms the previous April.

On ai???state and local levels, these are devastating, to-the-bone cuts that erode the basic capacity of communities to fulfill their basic responsibilities when disaster strikes,ai??? wrote Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia Universityai??i??s Mailman School of Public Health, in response to the cuts that disaster detection, preparedness, and recovery have faced over the past few years.

Demonizing the governmentai??i??s ability to assist ordinary Americans has become …

Last night, bold progressive Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH)Ai?? faced off with his right-wing challenger Josh Mandel.

At one point, the debate host Chuck Todd asked both candidates if they would be open to raising the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare, which would amount to a huge cut to benefits for both programs.

Mandel tried to weasel out of answering the question, saying that he was open to making changes to the programs for younger people but would not specify whether he would make these exact changes.

When it came time for Brown to answer, he didn’t waver. He blasted the idea of raising the retirement age and eloquently explained that working-class people can’t work any longer:

BROWN: Here’s why I wouldn’t raise the retirement age, the age for Medicare eligibility. I met a woman in Youngstown a few months ago. Who said, ‘I’m 63 years old I don’t have health insurance, I just want to stay alive until I turn 65 so I can get health insurance.’ If you raise the retirement age…maybe if you dress like this, if you’re the state treasurer, you’re a U.S. Senator maybe it works, but for a whole lot of working Americans it doesn’t.

TODD: But does it work for anybody?

BROWN: No, you don’t! You don’t. … On Social Security, I would not raise the retirement age, because working people, construction people, people who work in diners can’t work until they’re 70! … I would think of raising the [payroll tax] cap.

Watch it:

Brown’s answer hit the nail on the head: raising the retirement age would hit working-class people the most, whose life expectancy actually hasn’t increased very much in recent years. Lifting the payroll tax cap and making the wealthy pay a little bit more would keep Social …

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is using a combination of a paid call center and a predictive dialing system for volunteers in order to meet a goal of at least one million calls on behalf of progressive candidates, the group’s organizers say. “What we wanted to do here is to set up a system where we can take the scale of the national volunteer program, and still operate it with the level of focus and volunteer cultivation that you would normally get with physical offices, face-to-face,” said Michael Snook, the PCCC’s chief information officer.

Commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal political action committee based in Washington, D.C., is being used not only to tout the electoral benefits of a ‘D,’ but to show broad support generally among Vermonters for one of the party’s defining policies: single-payer health care. The poll found that 53 percent of Vermonters “approve of Vermont going forward with Green Mountain Care, a single-payer health care system that will guarantee coverage for everyone in the state.” The survey found that 38 percent disapprove.

Tommy Thompson

Wisconsin Senate Republican candidate and health care profiteer Tommy Thompson is getting desperate. He has launched a new television ad attacking his bold progressive opponent Tammy Baldwin as unpatriotic because she voted against a resolution commemorating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2006.

But in criticizing Baldwin, Thompson is obscuring an important fact about the resolution Baldwin voted against. The resolution didn’t just honor 9/11’s victims and commemorate the attacks, it was heavily politicized and included support for Republican legislation that harmed civil liberties. Here’s a portion of the resolution that Republicans inserted and that had nothing to do with honoring 9/11’s victims:

Whereas Congress passed, and the President signed, numerous laws to assist victims, combat the forces of terrorism, protect the Homeland and support the members of the Armed Forces who defend American interests at home and abroad, including the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and its 2006 reauthorization, the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004;

As you can see, the resolution included support for the highly controversial USA PATRIOT Act, which many people across the political spectrum view as an attack on American civil liberties. It also included support for various immigration bills that were hotly-debated at the time.

The insertion of this section into the bill had nothing to do with remembering those America lost on 9/11. They simply served to politicize the legislation and make it supportive of Republican priorities.

Furthermore, Baldwin has voted repeatedly for bills that honored 9/11’s victims. For example, last year she voted to “award three Congressional Gold Medals in honor of the victims …

Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH)

Republican Members of Congress love to bash the stimulus bill and then ask for stimulus dollars and tout its projects back home. In 2010, over 110 Republican lawmakers who voted against the stimulus bill simultaneously tried to take credit for stimulus projects in their districts and/or asked for more money.

On Wednesday, Republican congressman Frank Guinta (NH) got called out by his bold progressive Democratic opponent Carol Shea-Porter over his own stimulus hypocrisy. Shea-Porter pointed out that Guinta criticizes the stimulus but that as the mayor of Manchester in 2009 and 2010 he requested stimulus funding for airport projects and other programs.

“You actually loved the stimulus, when you were mayor and asked for money from me!” Shea-Porter said.

Should employees feel like their jobs are threatened if they vote for Obama?

There is a wave of corporate intimidation going on across the country, where CEOs are telling their employees not to vote for President Obama or other Democrats.

Take this example from Milwaukee today:

Mike White, the chairman and owner of Rite-Hite, a major Milwaukee manufacturer of industrial equipment, told employees in an email this week that all employees “should understand the personal consequences to them of having our tax rates increase dramatically if President Obama is re-elected, forcing taxpayers to fund President Obama’s future deficits and social programs (including Obamacare), which require bigger government.”

The email stunned some employees. One employee said he felt threatened by the email. “It’s a good company, but for this to come out, it’s absurd,” the employee said.

Needless to say, employers should not be intimidating their employees or unfairly making them feel like they will face repercussions in the workplace if they vote the way they want.

It’s time to reclaim our democracy from Corporate America. Click here to join our “Take Back Democracy” campaign.

Rodney Davis drew laughs from the audience last night when he claimed he’d protect Medicare and Social Security.

When Rodney Davis — the Republican running for Congress in Illinois’s 13th congressional district — was asked if he supported Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicare and gut the social safety net, he said that while he’d like to tweak certain details, Ryan was “in concept…right on.”

So when Davis debated with his bold progressive Democratic opponent Dr. David Gill last night, he had a hard time convincing the audience that he wanted to protect Medicare and Social Security. “I’m the only candidate on the stage who will preserve and protect Social Security and Medicare,” he thundered. But the audience didn’t buy it — it responded with laughter. Watch it:

Watch it:

Davis’s opponent Gill not only opposes privatizing Medicare — he has pledged to be a blocking vote to the Ryan plan — he wants to strengthen and expand it to all Americans.

Click here to chip in a few dollars to Gill’s campaign and to keep Davis out of Washington.

On the eve of today’s 10th anniversary of the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), family, friends, former Congressional colleagues and average Americans who were touched by Wellstone’s work gathered on a conference call to share their memories of one of the icons of the progressive movement, vowing to continue to champion the causes he fought so hard for… This is a person who understood his moral compass,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee Co-Founder Adam Green said on the call. “And even when he was an isolated voice in an out of touch Senate, he voted his conscience and was very much the tip of a spear of an entire movement across this country.”

Josh Mandel

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock made headlines when he offensively said that pregnancies that result from rape are a “gift from God.” Many in his party immediately moved to condemn him, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

But Ohio Senate Republican candidate Josh Mandel is refusing to take the same step. Asked by an Ohio reporter about Mourdock’s comments, Mandel simply would not condemn the offensive remarks.

REPORTER: He said that even when life begins in a horrible situation of rape that is something that God intended, is that something that you’d denounce?

MANDEL: I think I’d want to see his comments. Is there a video of it?
REPORTER: It was in a debate last night.

MANDEL: I think I’d want to see the debate or the video before I comment on that.

REPORTER: It’s true that you do not have an exception when it comes to abortion. You’re pro-life in all cases, even —

MANDEL: I think it’s important to protect the life of hte mother, and I’m proud to be pro-life.

REPORTER: Even in the possibility of rape?

MANDEL: That’s true.

Watch it:

Ohio deserves a Senator who condemns such offensive remarks. Click here to sign up to make calls for Mandel’s opponent, bold progressive Sen. Sherrod Brown (D).

Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the tragic death of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. Wellstone was one of the Senate’s top progressive champions — an advocate for universal health care, children, the middle class, and the poor.

He stood against his own party’s leadership by voting against authorizing the Iraq war. When fighting the Wall Street banks, he said he could use ten more progressives in the Senate “or one Elizabeth Warren.”

The Daily Kos community is invited to join the Progressive Change Campaign Committee tonight for a national conference call with Senator Paul Wellstone’s son David and other special guests. Together, progressives will honor Paul Wellstone’s life, share memories, and discuss continuing his legacy.

Can you join us by phone or online at 9:30pm Eastern? RSVP here.

Here’s what PCCC members around the country felt 10 years ago when Wellstone passed:

ai???I was completely overwhelmed by grief.ai??? ai??i?? Michael Donnelly, Minnesotaai???I’m a former Wellstone staffer. His death was devastating, and still is. I’ll never get over it.ai??? ai??i?? Roger Wolfson, California

ai???I cried. I’m 76 and in the struggle a long time. He was a beacon for us.ai??? ai??i?? Ann Dellert, Florida

ai???Devastated. Even though I live in California, I always felt that he represented me. It was so encouraging that someone with strong principles could win elections and maintain his values.ai??? ai??i?? Lorraine Priceman, California

ai???I felt devastated. My first political contribution ever was to Paul Wellstone.ai??? ai??i?? Anita Jackson, California

ai???I could not believe it, it made be sick, I called everyone I knew. I said a prayer for his family.ai??? ai??i?? Nancy Wilson, Minnesota

Please join the PCCC, David Wellstone, and others tonight as we remember Paul Wellstone together. Join us by phone or online at 9:30pm Eastern — RSVP here.

(Photo credit: Flickr user Brian Harrington Spier)

Last week, we told you how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — perhaps the most powerful corporate lobbying group in all of Washington — is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch mailers in Massachusetts attacking Elizabeth Warren.

It’s important to remember that even though the Chamber has “U.S.” in front of it’s name, it has been caught in the past taking funding from foreign entities like the state-owned Bahrain Petroleum Company.

Because it refuses to disclose its donors, we don’t know who all of the group’s corporate sponsors are. But an alarming bit of news from the Wall Street Journal suggests that they may be even more corrupt than we imagine. The paper reports that the Chamber is suing to stop regulations that require companies to disclose whether they use blood diamonds:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers filed a challenge late Friday toAi??rules requiring U.S.-listed companies to disclose whether their products contain minerals blamed for fueling violence in central Africa.

The Chamber works on behalf of its donors, and this bit of news suggests that companies involved in the blood diamond trade in Africa are likely Chamber donors.

Members of Congress work on behalf of their donors, too. The Chamber opposes the Affordable Care Act and equal pay for women. So does Warren’s opponent, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).

If Brown is re-elected with the Chamber’s dollars, we may see him, too, fighting regulations requiring the disclosure of blood diamonds.

We don’t have to let that happen. Click here to sign up make calls to voters for Warren.

Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY)

Outsourcing is a huge problem in the United States, and that’sAi??due to government policies like so-called free trade agreements. New York congressman Tom Reed (R-NY) has been a proponent of these job-killing deals, and voted for new agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.Ai??Those agreements are expected to cost AmericaAi??at least 214,000 jobs.

One of the corporate lobbying groups that pushes for these agreements is the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Yesterday, NAM honored Reed with an award for voting at least 70 percent of the time with the group. Watch a local news report about the Ai??award:

Reed told the press that NAM is a “great organization that stands up for manufacturing jobs.” But NAM doesn’t represent manufacturing workers, it represents manufacturing corporations, who have been sending jobs overseas to poorly-paid foreign workers.

NAM calls itself the “strongest and most aggressive voice here at home and internationally for…free trade agreements.” It lobbied aggressively to pass the three recent agreements that Reed voted for.

It’s sad that Reed would associate himself with such a vociferously anti-jobs organization.

Click here to pitch in a few dollars for his bold progressive opponent, Nate Shinigawa.

Josh Mandel

Josh Mandel — the Republican is running against bold progressive Senator Sherrod Brown (D-MA) — released his “ten point” plan for health care yesterday. The two most specific and major ideas in Mandel’s plan are the following: re-instating $716 billion in wasteful and inefficient subsidies for private insurance companies in Medicare while repealing the Affordable Care Act, and block-granting Medicaid.

The first is self-explanatory. The Affordable Care Act reduced subsidies to private insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, which saves taxpayers money and does nothing to reduce Medicare benefits. Republicans have seized on this to misleadingly claim that Obama cut Medicare, and are serving their insurance company paymasters by trying to repeal this reform.

The second idea, however, is both newer and incredibly dangerous. Block-granting Medicaid would eliminate the current financing structure where the federal government picks up 50 to 75 percent of each state’s Medicaid costs. Instead, it would dramatically decrease the amount of money that the federal government spends on the program and would give states flexibility to drop more Medicaid-eligible patients altogether.

The non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed possible state responses to transforming Medicaid into a block grant program and repealing the Affordable Care Act and predicted that between 31 and 44 million Americans would lose their health coverage altogether if this change were to be enacted.

Don’t let Mandel enact his radical health care plan. Go here to chip in a few dollars to Sherrod Browns campaign.

Cravaack’s opponent, Rick Nolan, is getting a boost from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in the form of phonebanking. The group has placed 11,108 phone calls to voters on behalf of Nolan, according to a press release.

Tommy Thompson

Wisconsin Republican Senate Tommy Thompson has been caught on tape saying he wants to “do away with Medicare and Medicaid.” To accomplish this assault on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — which he supported privatizing in 2004 — he has to try to convince the public that they are going broke.

So maybe that explains this bizarre statement by Thompson. At a recent Republican Party event in Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson ludicrously claimed that China is paying for a portion of every Social Security and Medicare check mailed to seniors:

THOMPSON: I look at the fact that 40 cents out of every dollar, ladies and gentleman, is borrowed mainly from the Chinese. Every Social Security check, every Medicare check 40 cents is borrowed from the Chinese. Does that make you comfortable?

Watch it:

Thompson is trying to claim that 40 cents out of every dollar in our Social Security and Medicare checks comes from the Chinese. The truth is actually the opposite. Social Security is fully financed through payroll contributions, taxes on higher income beneficiaries, and the interest on its own surplus. In fact, it is actually one of the largest holders of U.S. debt — meaning that not only do we not borrow from the Chinese to finance it, but it actually keeps us from borrowing more from the Chinese and other foreign debt holders.

With respect to Medicare, it is also largely funded by its own dedicated revenue stream of payroll taxes, although half of Medicare Part A is funded by general revenue.

And by the way, China only owns 10 percent of U.S. treasuries.

This leaves one of two possibilities. Either Thompson is too ignorant to realize that American taxpayers, not Chinese debt holders, pay for …

Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH)

In a debate with his bold progressive opponent Carol Shea-Porter on Friday, Republican congressman Frank Guinta (NH) had a novel solution to global warming: drill for more dirty fuels:

MODERATOR: Are you concerned about greenhouse gases and climate change? If so, what specific action would you take to stem greenhouse gas use. If not, do you feel you’re gambling with our future? […]

GUINTA: One of the bills that I authored and co-sponsored was an “all of the above energy policy.” I think with 19 million barrels of oil that we use today in America, and with seven million production I think we can both increase exploration and production and we can reduce usage through smart conservation programs. […] I think you can have greater exploration of fossil fuels and natural gas.

Watch it (the relevant comments begin about a minute in):

Other than a token reference to conservation, Guinta doesn’t seem to have any solution other than to increase oil drilling.

Needless to say, drilling for more oil isn’t going to resolve our environmental problems. But it is a way for Guinta to fund-raise from the dirty fuels industry. He’s gotten $5,000 each from the Political Action Committees of Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil. He not only wants to give the industry expanded drilling, but he also supports $7 billion in oil subsidies every year.

In the past, Guinta actually has gone even further than most of his Republican colleagues in brandishing his anti-environmental stands on behalf of the oil industry. He once called for abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency altogether.

We don’t need any more lackeys for Big Oil in Congress. Click here to sign up to make calls for Guinta’s opponent, Carol Shea-Porter.

Last June, Senate Republicans filibusteredAi??and killed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which was designed to make sure women can get equal pay for equal work at their jobs.

One of the Senators who joined this filibuster effort was Scott Brown (MA). Brown — who, remember, is running misleading commercials claiming he is a friend to women voters — told the mediaAi??the bill would’ve placed “job-killing burdens on small businesses.”

But what the media didn’t report was that many of the same Big Business front groups and lobbyists that battled the bill behind the scenes have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-elect Brown since he helped kill fair pay for women.

In the days leading up to the Senate vote for the bill, corporate lobbyists from groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) lined up to oppose it. One group, theAi??Society for Human Resource Management, mobilized human resources officers at corporate firms to lobby senators to kill the bill.

The resulting filibuster ended up killing the bill, in a blow to women everywhere who are discriminated against in the workplace. But as is often the case in Washington, the vote was just the beginning. The payoff was what senators like Brown were waiting for.

Before the vote, Brown received $238,028 from interests opposed to the bill. But in his campaign against bold progressive Elizabeth Warren, the real payday arrived. Two weeks ago, Norquist’s ATR dropped $162,000 on mailers attacking Warren on behalf of Brown.

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — which has in the past been caught taking funding from overseas corporations like the state-owned Bahrain Petroleum Company — spent $300,000 to hire Meridian Strategies, …

Hawaii Republican Senate candidate Linda Lingle

So-called “free trade” agreements — which drop trade barriers that harm the middle class but which protect well-connected corporations — are increasingly unpopular with the American public. A 2010 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 69 percent of Americans believe these agreements cost American jobs and only 18 percent think they create jobs.

But Hawaii Republican Senate candidate Linda Lingle attacked her bold progressive Democratic opponent Mazie Hirono for opposing one of these agreements in a debate last month. Here’s what Lingle said:

“My opponent doesn’t really understand the nature of being globally competitive. She was the only member of the Hawaii delegation that voted against the free trade agreement with South Korea. That made no sense for the people of Hawaii,” said Lingle.

Why would Lingle be boasting of supporting free trade agreements — such as the Korea agreement, which is estimated to cost 159,000 U.S. jobs in the first seven years — that are very unpopular with the public? Because maybe she’s not talking to constituents — she’s talking to out-of-state corporations, lobbyists, and other big donors.

One of the groups that most strongly pushed for the South Korea trade agreement was the Automotive Free International Trade Political Action Committee (AFITPAC), which is funded by certain auto dealers that benefited from the agreement. AFITPAC gave $10,000 to Lingle’s campaign. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the powerful corporate front group that spearheaded the push for the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990’s, gave her $11,250. Her very top donor is megabank Goldman Sachs, which also lobbied for the Korea trade agreement.

End the cycle of pay-to-play. Click here to chip in a few dollars to Lingle’s opponent, bold progressive Mazie Hirono.

Many lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, are coy about their desire to cut Social Security. But Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) — who has in the past called it a “Ponzi Scheme” — is very upfront about his desire to cut the program.

In a debate on Friday with his Democratic opponent Joe Miklosi, Coffman admitted that he wants to cut Social Security by raising the retirement age to 70:

COFFMAN: And on Social Security I do think for people below age 55, we’re gonna have to phase that up gradually to age 70.

Watch it (the relevant comments are at 12:50):

Raising the retirement age would not only amount to a large reduction in benefits, but it would disproportionately hurt working-class people. White collar workers — like, say, Members of Congress like Coffman — have had remarkable gains in life expectancy in recent decades. But blue-collar workers are barely living longer at all.

We don’t have to let Coffman cut our Social Security. Click here to chip in a few dollars to his opponent, Joe Miklosi.